A lecture by Stephen Fliegal presented to members of the Cleveland’s
Rowfant Club and Columbus, Ohio’s Aldus Society at the Cleveland Museum of
Art, November 10, 2002. Dr. Fliegal is curator of Medieval Art for the Cleveland
Museum of Art. Pictures of art, artifacts, manuscripts and architecture
referenced in the text of the lecture do not accompany the text of this lecture.

The works of the Pre-Raphaelites are among the
best-known and best-loved of all English paintings, and yet there has been an
unfortunate tendency over the years to dismiss them as mere Victoriana, and to
deny them their proper place in the history of art. The Pre-Raphaelite movement
itself spanned some fifty years, roughly the second half of the 19th
century. As an artistic movement, it cannot be defined simply as a single style
since it comprised artists of varying talents, artistic personalities, and
visual tendencies. When most of us think of the Pre-Raphaelite painters we
generally summon to mind memorable, almost iconic images of beautiful
long-haired women in medieval dress, or scenes drawn from English history and
Arthurian legend. While the Pre-Raphaelites were also interested in contemporary
Victorian life, there is, to be sure, a fascination, some might call it an
obsession, with that vast epoch we know as the Middle Ages. Nineteenth-century
England had discovered the Middle Ages anew. Heroic pictures like Sir Francis
Dicksee’s La Belle Dame sans Merci, shown on your left, or Dante
Gabriel Rossetti’s Joan of Arc, fed the insatiable appetite of a public
now steeped in the poetry of Keats and Tennyson, Sir Walter Scott’s historic
novels, and in Gothic Revival architecture. In 1819, when Sir Walter Scott
published his novel Ivanhoe, 12,000 copies were sold within the first few
weeks following its publication – an astronomical number for the time. It is
against the backdrop of Victorian medievalism that the Pre-Raphaelites launched
their journey backwards in time.

Victorian "medievalism" was a complex movement, the
origins of which extend back far beyond the Victorians themselves, and whose
impact can be felt well into our own century. It was made up of many components—the
Gothic Revival, essentially a movement of design—being just one of these. It
embraces art and architecture, literature and philosophy, economics and
sociology, as well as politics and religion. At the height of the Revival
scarcely an aspect of life remained untouched by it. Visually, it changed the
face of the English-speaking world and influenced public taste even into our own
times. In art, the Gothic Revival reflects a shift from the use of classical
sources, the subject of post-Renaissance art, and the rediscovery of northern
traditions. It connected immediately to the rise of English nationalism in the
nineteenth century. At this time the word "England" came to stand,
metonymically, for the whole of Great Britain and even in some configurations,
for the British Empire. It is no surprise, therefore, that the Pre-Raphaelites
helped re-invent St. George, the patron saint of England, who destroyed the
dragon and saved the princess. But what, we must ask, were the Victorians
looking for in an age so unlike their own?

Victorian medievalism has often been characterized as a form
of anti-modern dissent. The feudal system, monastic institutions, the code of
chivalry, and the romantic reputation of the Middle Ages offered an escape from,
or solutions to, 19th –century problems of social order,
industrialization, poverty, and crises of faith. I show you on the right the
Royal Albert Memorial in London, built between 1863 and 1872 after the design of
George Gilbert Scott. The monument clearly relies on 14th-century
English perpendicular architecture for its inspiration. And on your left is
Scott’s St. Pancras Railway Station and Hotel, built in 1863 and still one of
London’s busiest stations.

In the early nineteenth century, the Gothic style of
architecture was increasingly used by owners of actual medieval manors and
castles as the appropriate style for refurbishments, or by builders who wished
to establish a link with the medieval past, and hence with English antiquity.
This is Haddon Hall in Derbyshire. Originally built towards the end of the 15th
century, it is typical of the vernacular medieval architecture in England of the
sort Victorian owners loved to emulate. In the 1820s and 30s, the Gothic style
became more archaeological in character as owners of such medieval houses sought
furnishings based upon genuine medieval sources, and earlier Gothic Revival
structures were criticized for the lack of fidelity to ancient models.

The art critic and social philosopher, John Ruskin, was one
of the most eloquent and widely read champions of Gothic architecture during the
19th century. He is shown here in a portrait of 1854 by John Everett
Millais. In his book, The Stones of Venice, published the year before,
Ruskin devoted a chapter to "The Nature of Gothic", in which he
praised Gothic architecture for "the magnificent science of its structure,
and the sacredness of its expression." As a young man Ruskin had toured the
Continent where he was deeply affected by her Gothic buildings such as Rouen
Cathedral, shown here in an early photograph.

Ruskin praised the freedom with which craftsmen worked in the
Gothic age, noting the great variations in structure and ornamentation seen when
comparing Gothic buildings of different periods and regions. He proposed that
this perceived freedom resulted in an art that was vibrant and reflected the
individuality of each craftsman, unlike the dull, repetitive quality of
factory-produced objects after the Industrial Revolution. Ruskin’s assessment
was, needless to say, fanciful and overly romanticized. Nevertheless, The
Stones of Venice was a resounding indictment against the industrialism of
the Victorian Age and the price we must pay for mass production and mechanical
finish. Ruskin advocated a return to Gothic principles and medieval models as
the only way out.

The architect, Augustus Welby Pugin, while working with
Charles Barry, designed much of the sculpture and decoration for London’s
Houses of Parliament, built between 1832 and 1840. Pugin was along with Ruskin
one of the most enthusiastic and forceful exponents of the Middle Ages in the 19th
century. He looked back to this period as the fusion of all that was best in
art, religion, and society, and saw in its Gothic architecture, Catholic faith,
and feudal order correctives to the problems of the present. Pugin’s Gothic
principles were extended beyond architecture alone to include furniture, silver,
and other branches of the decorative arts. I show you here a Gothic chalice of
1849, now in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s collection, and a monstrance made
by his firm in 1850, as examples. The monstrance is in St. Mary’s Church,
Clapham. Pugin was absolutely fastidious in his adaptation of original medieval
designs. I think this is evident when we compare the fidelity of his designs
with an authentic medieval object. On your right is a late 15th
century German monstrance from the Guelph Treasure.

As far as solutions went, Pugin was convinced that only a
spiritual revival could recreate the ideal of the medieval church. Only when
moral values were restored would great architecture and liturgical furnishings
once more be produced. For Pugin, this return to the medieval church became a
personal reality when, in 1833, he converted to Roman Catholicism. Henceforth,
most of his designs were made for churches within that faith, as for example the
Roman Catholic cathedral in Birmingham shown on the right.

Like Pugin, critics, artists, and social reformers were quick
to see parallels between the decline of Victorian architecture and the decline
of post-medieval society. By the early 1870s, John Ruskin advocated a social
philosophy crafted after the medieval model. He believed in the rightness and
inevitability of inequality in the world. He conceived of the state as a
hierarchic structure, like the feudal system of the Middle Ages, where each
class is dependent on the one above it. The inspiration for such relationships,
he believed, was to be found in the medieval ideal of chivalry. By chivalry he
means the protection of the weak by the strong, which is the responsibility of
the rich and the wellborn. In return for this protection, according to Ruskin,
the masses will be expected to be obedient to their superiors. This well-known
miniature from Jean de Berry’s Très Riches Heures of about 1412 seems
the perfect exemplar of Ruskin’s philosophy: happy and contented peasants
toiling beneath the baronial manor house, secure and protected by their lord,
and wanting for nothing.

The Victorian medieval revival was already in full swing when
in September 1848 seven men, each about 20 years old, gathered in a London house
and founded a secret society called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The term was
culled from their conviction that the painting of Raphael was the origin of a
bankrupt academic tradition. Three friends and former students of the Royal
Academy of Art, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, seen here on the left, William Holman
Hunt, and John Everett Millais, seen on the right in a self-portrait, provided
the driving force behind the Brotherhood. They would look backwards to the late
Middle Ages, and to its great masters, Fra Angelico, Jan van Eyck, and Hans
Memling for technique and method. Much of their subject matter would be gleaned
directly from sources such as Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, or
through the more recent literature of Walter Scott, John Keats, and Alfred
Tennyson.

Among the earliest efforts of the Brotherhood was a scheme to
illustrate Keats’s poem "Isabella". Each member was to submit a
design for the poem, which was to be executed entirely on these new principles.
Millais’s painting of 1849, shown on the right, clearly reveals a deliberated
attempt at working in an unfamiliar and archaic style. The minute attention to
detail, seen in the costumes and fabric, suggest a direct if hasty study of
medieval panel or miniature painting much like those lavishly clad figures found
in the Très Riches Heures. Yet, at the same time there is something
contrived and unnatural about this painting, probably the result of Millais’s
early intellectual uncertainty. What is immediately noticeable in Isabella
is the use of bright pigments on a white ground, a hallmark of Pre-Raphaelite
technique. The effect, I think you will agree, startles as much today as it did
in 1849.

Another example of Millais’s highly medievalized paintings
is this illustration of Mariana of 1851, bejeweled with color, and directly
inspired by lines from the Tennyson poem. Millais is clearly fascinated here
with the sumptuous coloring of medieval manuscripts and the fine brush technique
of Memling and Van Eyck. The deep blue of Mariana’s dress contrasts vividly
with the intense colors of the stained glass that Millais copied from the
windows of Merton College Chapel in Oxford. His painting derives in spirit from
Flemish panels like the well-known Arnolfini Marriage Portrait painted in
1434 by Jan van Eyck.

Women feature largely in the pictures of the Pre-Raphaelites.
Indeed, the term "Pre-Raphaelite" now denotes a particular feminine
look, with cascades of rippling hair, a long neck and soulful eyes. The role of
Woman as Muse to the Pre-Raphaelite imagination is well-established and explored
in the art historical literature. Many of Rossetti’s paintings of women were,
in fact, studies of his favorite model, Jane, the wife of William Morris. But
what of women’s experience in real life? How did women fare in the
Pre-Raphaelite Circle? Thanks to the wealth of biographical information—unusual
for women in most phases of art and history—we know a good deal about
Pre-Raphaelite private life, and the connections and contrasts between art and
reality. It is important not to confuse the two, nor to read biography into or
from the pictures; even in portraiture, the distance between art and life is
always significant.

Several of the Pre-Raphaelite painters were raised in
unusually egalitarian families, where brothers and sisters shared artistic
interests. Hunt’s sister Emily was an aspiring artist; Joanna Boyce studied in
Paris and encouraged her brother George in his career; Rosa Brett painted as
well as kept house for her brother John. Simeon Solomon was close to his brother
Abraham and sister Rebecca, themselves accomplished painters, and both Frederick
Sandys and his sister Emma were taught by their artist father. In this
post-Romantic period, however, artistic genius was widely regarded as an
exclusively male attribute. Many went as far as Ruskin to claim that "no
woman could paint" in the sense of producing great works. For this reason
among others, the works of women artists seldom made their way into public
collections. But the Pre-Raphaelite group was notable for its encouragement of
women’s artistic achievements; indeed, a whole sisterhood of female
contemporaries, whose work is only now being rediscovered, existed alongside the
male painters.

Victorian interest in the Middle Ages was, by the mid-19th
century, accompanied by growing concern about authenticity of detail. Precision
and verisimilitude became almost obligatory in the reconstruction of the past,
and artists and writers were forced to take account of a wealth of
archaeological data that both informed and extended their knowledge of medieval
history. The London-based Pre-Raphaelites could turn to many sources in that
city for historical reference. Monuments such as Westminster Abbey with its
royal tombs provided historic examples of medieval forms and ornamentation,
while the newly founded South Kensington Museum, later re-named the Victoria
& Albert Museum, became an important repository for medieval works of art.

The 19th century was the great age of collecting
medieval art, which was by then flooding the art market. The French Revolution,
the decline and dissolution of princely houses in a Europe that was slowly
democratizing, the secularization of monasteries—all of these were dispersing
great and small medieval treasures across Europe and North America. Many of
these will today be found in America’s great museums. On the left, for
example, is the great 12th-century Limoges enamel cross, now in this
museum. It is often referred to as the "Spitzer Cross", after its 19th
century Parisian owner, Frederic Spitzer. And on the right, I show you the
so-called "Strogonoff Ivory" named after the Russian ex-patriate,
Gregor Strogonoff, who owned this 11th-century Byzantine ivory while
residing in Rome at the end of the 19th century. Such objects were
highly sought after by eager 19th century collectors, steeped with
enthusiasm for Medieval culture. The ramifications were especially great for
medieval illuminated manuscripts which, in the 19th century, were
often sold by weight. This unfortunately was largely a time in which medieval
manuscripts were dismembered, their exquisite miniatures removed and pasted into
albums much like modern family snapshots, and their texts and bindings thrown
away.

The Italian abbot turned art dealer, Luigi Celotti, acquired
from Napoleon’s soldiers a large number of illuminated manuscripts that they
had looted from the Sistine Chapel in 1798. These he dismembered and sold
profitably at Christie’s in London on May 26, 1825. I show you a beautiful
miniature from this Sistina group by Matteo da Milano, that passed from Celotti
to the Englishman, William Ottley, and eventually by gift to this museum. John
Ruskin, himself the owner of over one hundred illuminated manuscripts wrote in
his diary in 1854: "Cut Missal up in evening—hard work." And here I
show you an actual manuscript leaf excised by Ruskin from a 14th
century antiphonal. Needless to say, medieval manuscripts by the tens of
thousands, furniture, ivories, metalwork, paintings, were all finding their way
into British homes, sometimes those of the middle class, and at modest cost.
Suits of armor, for example, could be purchased in the 1830s for 25 to 30 pounds
sterling apiece. Serious collectors were more pedantic about their purchases and
provided authentic Gothic settings for the display of their collections. The
work of scholarly societies played an important part in the encouragement and
maintenance of new standards of accuracy in this sphere. Between 1834 and 1836
alone, twelve new antiquarian societies were founded, all of which produced
journals to document their findings.

This data was assembled and catalogued by a new breed of
historian, the antiquary, who to some extent replaced the 18th
century connoisseur as the 19th-century collector and scholar. His
knowledge was specialist rather than cultured, his activities painstaking rather
than inspired, and his collections made on the basis of research rather than on
taste alone.

Unlike the wealthy amateur, the Victorian antiquarian was not
necessarily a member of the moneyed classes. A plethora of publications on
historical costume, architecture, and genealogy were addressed to the educated,
but not always leisured, sections of society. This was the world of
Pre-Raphaelite medievalism. Medieval art was there to be studied or owned by
those so inclined.

One of Edward Burne-Jones’s most important early pictures, The
Merciful Knight, painted in 1863, shows a serious attempt at historical
veracity and scholarly observation. The knight’s armor is an accurately
rendered German field suit of about 1480, complete with sallet helmet, much like
that shown on the left. Burne-Jones may have studied such armor at the Royal
Armouries in the White Tower of the Tower of London. The Tower complex with its
armouries was a major tourist attraction during the 19th century,
drawing artists and casual sightseers in droves, much as it does today. Burne-Jones
would surely have used this important repository to research the historical
accuracy and ornamental detail of his knight’s armor. The Merciful Knight
illustrates the story of the 11th-century Florentine knight, Sir John
Gualberto, who was miraculously embraced by Christ in token of a deed of mercy
performed on Good Friday. The minor glitch is that Burne-Jones’s knight wears
15th-century articulated plate armor, as yet unknown in the 11th
century.

Another interesting study of chivalry and knighthood is
Millais’s 1857 picture, Sir Isumbras at the Ford, shown on the left,
clearly meant to convey symbolic meaning and pathos. Here the inspiration is
likely to be Dürer’s 1513 engraving, The Knight, Death, and the Devil,
with its own apocalyptic and moralistic imagery. Similarly, a study in chalk and
watercolor by Edward Burne-Jones entitled the Sleep of King Arthur in Avalon,
with its eerie and etherial atmosphere suggests a direct knowledge of the
funerary sculpture of the Tomb of Philippe Pot, shown on the right. The
sculpture, carved by Antoine le Moitourier in the 1440s, is preserved in the
Louvre in Paris. It must have been seen by Burne-Jones when he visited the
Louvre with William Morris in 1855.

During the Middle Ages, the literature of chivalry became a
popular form of entertainment, disseminated through poetry and song, among
Europe’s cultured and wealthy elite. Medieval nobility were steeped in the
courtly literature of Arthur, Gawain, and Tristan. They ordered fine illuminated
manuscripts, objects of daily life such as ivory boxes, combs, and even
furniture, decorated with representations taken from Arthurian romance. Four
centuries later, chivalry, once again, became a powerful magnet, this time for
literate, largely middle class, Victorians familiar with King Arthur and the
knights of the Round Table through the poetry of Tennyson and Keats. Rossetti in
painting, like Tennyson in literature, turned to Arthurian themes. Sir Thomas
Malory’s treatment of Arthurian legends in the 15th century was to
provide a large pool of subjects for Victorian writers and later for the
Pre-Raphaelites, all attracted by his intensely medieval, chivalrous and
romantic atmosphere. Bold knights and fair ladies were much appreciated by the
Victorian public. This pen and ink drawing by Rossetti was originally intended
to form a mural, one in a series of ten, to decorate the upper walls of the
Oxford Union Hall. The scene recounts the sad and fateful episode of the Round
Table in which Lancelot visits Guinevere in her chamber while Arthur is away
hunting. The couple is discovered and challenged by the remaining knights.
Lancelot fights and defeats them despite having only a sword and no armor.
Guinevere is subsequently accused of treason and condemned to death at the
stake. She is dramatically rescued by Lancelot, but the conflict between
Lancelot and Arthur leads to the dissolution of the Round Table.

Two years later, in 1859, Rossetti painted what would be the
last of his medievalist watercolors, his Sir Galahad at the Ruined Chapel.
This watercolor is based directly on Tennyson’s poem "Sir Galahad"
of 1842. It reveals Galahad as the purest of Arthur’s knights, whose celibacy
and spirituality, serve to counterbalance the character of Lancelot. Galahad
ultimately achieves the Holy Grail, and following Tennyson’s poem, the Chapel
of the Forest is revealed only to be a vision. Typical of Pre-Raphaelite
treatment of Arthurian legend, Rossetti’s study seems ambivalent, oscillating
between accurate representation and moral homily.

During the Middle Ages, images of devotion and salvation were
brought close to the viewer in order to encourage an emotional response. Works
of art played a major role in this form of spirituality. Not only did medieval
artists produce pictures for those who could not read, they also created images
for those who, above all, wanted to have scenes of their salvation tangibly
before them. The function of these images can be summarized in three ways:
instruction, veneration and remembrance. Lay people were taught how to pray and
ordinary believers were trained in the spiritual values that had evolved in the
claustral world of the monastics. In addition to illuminated prayer books, the
private quarters of a nobleman’s residence were often adorned with small
paintings, either diptychs or triptychs, such as this one on the right by the
Italian painter, Duccio. They were made in such a way that the owner could put
them on display wherever he was—by standing them on a table, hanging them on a
wall, or, if it were small enough, he could even wear it around his neck.
Devotional images were a transfixing conduit between the believer and the object
of his or her devotions. This culture of prayer had been long lost by a
Victorian society deep in the midst of a crisis of faith. While beautiful,
though sentimental, medieval spirituality is obviously lacking in Pre-Raphaelite
depictions of sacred subjects. A common devotional image during the later Middle
Ages was the Annunciation. The Virgin Mary is usually shown in prayer as she
receives the Archangel Gabriel who announces the Immaculate Conception. Again, I
use Duccio as an example.

For the Pre-Raphaelites, this powerful medieval image was a
natural subject for pictorial art. Yet the painting of 1858 by Arthur Hughes,
shown on the left, clearly lacks the conviction of faith and spirituality
present in medieval Annunciations. The figures are stiff and the expressions
blank and the composition is essentially contrived. Burne-Jones was slightly
more successful with his guache Annunciation of 1861. However, his 1879
interpretation of the subject has clearly advanced in anticipation of art
nouveau.

Of all the Pre-Raphaelite artists, William Morris drew on the
Middle Ages more consistently than most of his contemporaries—as a craftsman,
poet, and political thinker. One way in which the Pre-Raphaelite tradition
lingered on was in various forms of the Arts and Crafts Movement, sponsored by
Morris, and also in his utopian socialism. For Morris, the Medieval Revival, of
which the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was part, reflected a sense of loss for a
pre-industrial society with a coherent system of beliefs, and became, in one
sense, a retrospective search for solace, inspiration, and ideals. William
Morris was born in 1834 when the revival was already in full swing, and the
Middle Ages remained until the end of his life in 1896 a constant source of
inspiration for him. Morris re-evaluated the notion of the Middle Ages as an era
of accidental confusion between two periods of order, the classical and the
modern.

By the time he went up to Oxford as a student in January
1853, the association of medievalism and the social question was a comparatively
familiar one in intellectual circles. Oxford was when Morris arrived still
essentially a medieval town in all appearances. I show you here the Duke
Humphrey wing of Oxford University’s Bodleian Library, built between 1445 and
1489. And this is a view of the choir vaults of Oxford Cathedral begun in 1480.
Morris would have known both of these buildings. It was at Oxford that Morris
met fellow student Burne-Jones, and it was there that both men familiarized
themselves with the writings of Ruskin and learned of the existence of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. [L34-R36] The Middle Ages for Morris was a
fascinating dreamworld which fired the imagination with images of romance and
mystery exemplified here by his 1858 picture of La Belle Iseult.

Fundamentally, however, Morris found Ruskin’s brand of
paternal politics and philosophical bias to be unacceptable. He instead chose to
graft Ruskinian ideas about art and society onto his own democratic socialism.
For Morris, medieval history was important in that it provided the Victorian
reformer with attractive pictures of the perceived democracy of medieval
institutions, of the fraternity of guilds, and of the creative freedom of the
medieval craftsman.

Morris’s interests ultimately came to rest upon the arts
and crafts, the so-called decorative arts, through which he became one of the
chief theorists and sponsors of Britain’s Arts and Crafts Movement. The
movement was a reaction against the dehumanizing effects of industrialization.
Its aesthetic was therefore based on social and moral considerations. The Arts
and Crafts Movement was essentially anti-academic, celebrating the virtues of
individualism and the designer’s right to experiment and to explore the full
possibilities of his materials. Both as a theorist, as well as in his practice
as a designer, William Morris was the greatest single influence on the Arts and
Crafts Movement. He founded his firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. in
1861. In its early stages the venture was essentially of Pre-Raphaelite
inspiration – Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, and Ford Madox Brown
also being founders. At first the firm worked mainly for ecclesiastical clients,
and at the outset stained glass formed the major part of its production.
Furniture, some metalwork, and tiles were also produced. But it was not until
after the 1870s that Morris began to concentrate on the designing of wallpapers
and fabrics. The wallpapers were hand-printed from wood blocks, and his weaves
and prints were similarly all made by hand. In 1888, Morris was inspired to set
up his own printing press after hearing a talk given by Emery Walker to the
Crafts Exhibition Society. Once again, he spurned the commercial short-cut—his
paper was hand-made, his inks were imported from Hannover, and since he loathed
the typefaces that were commercially available, he designed three faces for the
press based upon 15th-century types. Always, the medieval craftsman
provided the model and the inspiration.

The Pre-Raphaelite fascination with the Middle Ages was to
some degree also linked to contemporary thought about religion. Strong feelings
and influential spokesmen, concentrated in the Oxford Movement in the 1830s,
called for a return to medieval rituals and ceremonies. The High Anglican Church
became the patron of Gothic architecture and the Tractarians advocated the use
of crosses, candlesticks, altarcloths and vestments. Thus they sought to invest
the contemporary church with the mystery and awe that they imagined would
revitalize belief.

Nineteenth century medievalism fostered the sense of
brotherhood and affection between men. This related to a conception, widespread
at the time, of the pre-industrial past as a time of sociability. Contemporaries
were very conscious of what they perceived as a breakdown of social feeling in
their own age. Neighborliness and old communities were thought to have
disappeared and connections between individuals to have broken down. The thread,
therefore, which holds together the many different expressions of medievalism is
the desire to return to an ordered yet organically vital society in the face of
great social change. For the artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the
Middle Ages was viewed increasingly as a golden age of faith, stability and
creativity. They would look back longingly to an agrarian past, thought of as
"Merry England", when institutions such as the manor or the village
bound men together in relationships strengthened by mutual interests and
affections. In so doing, the Pre-Raphaelites argued convincingly that the art of
the present could indeed equal the art of the past.

For me, the Pre-Raphaelites were selective idealists. They,
and critics like Ruskin and Morris were as much about social reform as they were
about art. Perhaps therein lay the problem. Their vision of the Middle Ages as
an historical epoch was clouded by a moral overlay, thus obscuring the veracity
of their perception of medieval life and art. In their selective vision, they
saw medieval society only in terms of its achievements, which are many, and in
terms of its romantic trappings, but never with the realist’s eye to its
brutality, endemic warfare, disease and class inequality. Writing in 1923, about
30 years after the death of William Morris, the great Dutch historian, Johann
Huizinga, described the Middle Ages with the following words:

To the world when it was half a thousand years younger, the
outlines of all things seemed more clearly marked than to us. The contrast
between suffering and joy, between adversity and happiness, appeared more
striking. Calamities and indigence were more afflicting than at present; it was
more difficult to guard against them, and to find solace. Illness and health
presented a more striking contrast; the cold and darkness of winter were more
real evils. Honors and riches were relished with greater avidity and contrasted
more vividly with surrounding misery. … At the close of the Middle Ages, a
sombre melancholy weighs on people’s souls. Whether we read a chronicle, a
poem, a sermon, a legal document even, the same impression of immense sadness is
produced by them all. It would sometimes seem as if this period had been
particularly unhappy, as if it had left behind only the memory of violence, of
covetousness and mortal hatred, as if it had known no other enjoyment but that
of intemperance, of pride and of cruelty.

Well, the truth is really somewhere between the idealism of
the Pre-Raphaelites and the pessimism of Huizinga.

For me the great achievement of Victorian medievalism was
that it laid the foundation for the academic study of medieval European history
and civilization. The great medieval historians of the next century: Erwin
Panofsky, Johann Huizinga, Charles Homer Haskins; Marc Bloch; David Knowles,
Etienne Gilson, not to mention the Oxford "Fantasists", C.S. Lewis and
J.R. Tolkien, all owed something to the legacy of Ruskin and Morris. The
Pre-Raphaelites and other Victorians stimulated an intellectual interest in
medieval civilization, where such interest was lacking before. And let us be
honest, they produced some profoundly beautiful paintings. Carefully studied,
Pre-Raphaelite images reflect perennial concerns—about sex and love,
friendship and betrayal, social class and national identity, desire and loss. In
our late industrial society, we struggle with the same issues and hopes—the
balance between love and work, security and freedom, the pleasures of art and
the needs of the world. Questions of social equity and sexual politics, then as
now, are still matters of experience and debate. Sometimes the pictorial
landscapes and imagery of Pre-Raphaelite art seems far removed from present-day
concerns—an archaic and imaginary realm of knights and ladies. As in every
age, however, the myths and the art of the past always find a way to engage with
present desires and fears.